Over the past several years, consumers have realized the convenience of electronic bill payment and billers are recognizing the reduced costs and reductions in late fees and delinquent payments. Furthermore, various e-commerce or e-business solutions have become available that allow individuals to perform financial transactions over the Internet through a secure website. This type of service enables customers to do their banking or financial transaction processing from anywhere where Internet access is available. In many cases, a web browser is utilized and any normal Internet connection is suitable. Thus, electronic billing and online financial transactions have become commonplace.
However, problems existing online systems, particularly with respect to electronic bill payment systems both for small business billers and for consumer payers. With respect to consumers, while consumers enjoy the convenience of electronic payment, they are often forced to receive bills from many different sources, e.g. phone company, gas company, electric company, mortgage lender, etc. Each bill is available through a different system and consumers are often required to log into these systems individually in order to pay their bills. The systems often have different passwords and usernames and it is virtually impossible for users to keep track of all of these.
As a result, third party aggregators have evolved to aggregate bills from multiple billers and allow consumers to access all of the bills from one centralized location. However, these third party aggregators are typically not available to small business billers and therefore consumers still have numerous bills that must be transmitted and paid through alternative channels. Furthermore, third party aggregators are often unavailable or undesirable for small business users, particularly businesses with a local client base.
While some financial institutions offer electronic billing (ebilling) services, these services are provided only for bank customers. Accordingly, the lack of centralization remains a problem for both businesses and consumers. While consumers are nearly universally able to pay bills electronically from their own banks, the consumers can add payees but are not offered billing details. Thus consumers receive bills from an alternative source, such as through the mail or electronically from the business directly. In order to pay the bill, particularly to small businesses that often do not accept credit cards, the consumer may have to use a payment service such as Paypal™, mail a paper check, or log into the consumer's own bank and have a check mailed to the business.
Additionally, even if customers and businesses are able to receive and pay bills through a third party aggregator, these bills are not linked to financial information, which is typically only available through a financial institution. Thus, payment of bills and receipt of bills is not visually linked to accounts or to any type of accounting system. Therefore, in order to get a larger financial picture, customers must access disparate systems and review the information available from all of these systems.
For small business owners, the payables and receivables environment is typically fragmented and includes multiple tools and programs that focus on only individual components of cash flow. These disjointed payables and receivable processes can have a negative impact on cash flow due to the incomplete overview available to business owners. Typically, small business owners are required to rekey data in order to manually reconcile payments with invoices. Furthermore, small business owners typically rekey data and manually manage reimbursements to employees. Additionally, small business owners do not have one consolidated view of their cash flow and are required to visit multiple sources in order to assess cash flow status.
Accordingly, a solution is needed that provides customers, particularly small businesses with an integrated receivables solution that tracks from estimate to invoice to receipt of payment, and integrates data into accounting and financial management software. The solution should show a complete cash flow picture by creating an experience that manages movement of money from start to finish and offers business owners real time transparency. To further enhance convenience, consumers and businesses both want to handle cash flow while in transit. Therefore, a need exists and a solution is needed for convenient mobile interfaces for generating and paying electronic bills.